Re: Re: Christmas Tree
A point well made Punchbowl – for too long our municipal Christmas trees have been dismally lit and decorated. Dublin’s principal tree on O’Connell Street is lit marginally better than usual in terms of density, but still embarrassingly strung up like a roast joint:
And last year:
It’s just not on the radar with DCC that Christmas tree lighting is as much about generating a silhouette, real or imagined, as it is making the tree itself look attractive. They don’t seem to realise you can’t see a tree after dark! So all we observe are ridiculous floating lines of lights, as no effort is ever made to mould them to the tree’s form.
This is one of the first years that it’s even bothered with to put decorations on it. The previously mentioned Newbridge stars, hung neatly out of reach, look pretty good.
Pity about the base of the tree though which is absolutely dismal, with no shape cut to it and dead branches by the bucketload..And needless to say the typical crass, plasticy, all-singing commercial hoarding plastered around it.
Why not a decent custom built timber fence that could be used year after year? Typical short-sightedness.
And all the mechanics are as usual on full view to the passer-by – not effort to cover them over.
(same as last year)
And need one be reminded of Grafton Street’s travesty last year:
It’s just embarrassing.
It’s very easy to be cynical about these things, and fall for the ploy of unfairly comparing ourselves to world capitals, but the amount of effort and imagination put into Dublin’s city trees is zilch. We don’t ask nor expect to get a 90 foot Rockefeller with a gazillion lights, but the city at least warrants a decent effort. 1998 at the top of Grafton Street was a fantastic specimen, and the lighting spectaularly good for an Irish tree.
Where did we go so wrong?
And this is happening unfortunately in the context of Dublin’s municipal Christmas lighting disimproving generally. For example Grafton Street’s distinctive red lighting is gradually being eroded year on year by white bulbs. Originally they just accented the scheme but are now almost as dominant as red. Also no effort has been made either to replace the (admittedly pleasnt) caricature lanterns with proper real versions. At least the recent minature trees was inspired.
(last year)
But worst of all, the simple glittering hoops of white bulbs that once lined so many Dublin streets that looked great day and night are being replaced by the most hideous techno rubbish of ropelights attached to metal frames, with crude colours and light sequences, all of which also looks truly terrible during daylight hours. I just don’t get this recent trend towards making streetscapes look like kips for the entire day for the sake of a mere handful of dark commercial hours. All of the pretty bulbs on North Earl Street, probably the last enclave of simple bulbs last year, have now been replaced by cheap tack, as with so many other streets, along the lines of this yoke attached to the GPO:
…with further examples now along Henry Street too. I though the whole point of the neat little Henrry Street units was to avoid this sort of muck?!
There’s no question that months of preparation goes into all of this nowadays, nor can one doubt DCC’s and tranders’ enthusiasm which is most welcome, but a more coordinated and considered approach is needed.
